“Tea Party at critical stage” (Part 2)

A few days ago Glenn Beck wrote about the realization that many people have regarding the strength of the opposition. The Democrats and the Republicans who are a part of the problem have had a big head start. They’ve got the funds – and even the troops needed to hold off disorganized reformers.

What I’m about to say might be the worst news yet. I believe the work that began in earnest last year with the rise of the tea parties and 9/12 Project is at least a decade long endeavor. Yes, we need some big victories early lest this country drive itself off of the fiscal cliff. But winning elections is only the first step. Moving public opinion on a sustained basis so office holders follow through and implement the course corrections is a much longer process that will be even more difficult.

Don’t forget—Republicans know how to win. They just don’t know how to govern in a manner that doesn’t wind up leading to the rise of Speaker Pelosis and President Obamas.

These are the dog days of summer. Forget about how you feel at the moment and enlist for the long haul. Think of what earlier generations had to endure. Spend some time reading the words of real leaders from the past—like Winston Churchill during World War II.

Seventy years ago this summer the Nazi war machine turned its attention to Britain and the bombing began. The Brits had been too slow to prepare for such an onslaught. Here is how Churchill concluded a speech he gave on June 18, 1940:

“Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.'”

We’re not up against the Nazi war machine—just a well funded liberal/progressive juggernaut that is too often enabled by unprincipled Republicans.

Glenn Beck might be right in describing the tea party movement as being in the critical “stage five.” To be honest, I’m very happy to see it that far along. Those of us who have been laboring on this battlefield for many years are thrilled to no longer be out-numbered.

If our side is smart, tea partiers, 9/12ers, and platform supporting Republicans will stick with the battle and do what’s necessary—build—recruit—improve—so that eventually we won’t be out-gunned. “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties…”

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“If by the liberty of the press were understood merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please: But if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating and defaming one another, I, for my part, own myself willing to part with my share of it.” —Benjamin Franklin (1789)